


Meet and Meet and Meet Again

by okaynowkiss



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Cats, M/M, Pre-Slash, Secret Magic, Shapeshifting, Sharing Clothes, it's like a meet cute except you've already met and now one of you is a cat, only the slightest bit AU, sometimes yuri is an actual cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 19:17:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9840350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynowkiss/pseuds/okaynowkiss
Summary: It's not the ideal reason for the two of them to be half-naked in a hotel supply room, but if Otabek is chill about it, he's still going to get Yuri's number at the end of the night.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for [this prompt](https://yurionicekink.dreamwidth.org/881.html?thread=62321#cmt62321) at the kink meme but realized too late that I didn't do 75% of the things the prompt asked for... so it's just getting posted here, but I'm grateful to that prompter!

He parks his motorcycle a block over. The hotel is valet only, and they won’t keep it in their lot for him. He does’t mind, except it would be safer in the lot, and tonight it’s pouring rain, the streets shining with it and everyone rushing into the nearest doorway they can find, so the sidewalks are almost deserted, even so early.

He walks and doesn’t run, because fuck it, it’s just rain.

He’s still around the corner from the hotel entrance when he sees a sign down a little lane bearing the name of the hotel. This must be the back entrance the clerk mentioned, so he should be able to get in with his keycard here. He walks down the alley. Now he’ll have to shower before dinner, since his hair’s a wet mess.

He’s digging the keycard out of his wallet when movement near the ground catches his eye. A little yellow cat is clawing at the door to be let in. It meows pitifully at him. It’s wet and hunched down, bigger than a kitten but still tiny, either a yearling or a really small breed.

He slides his card into the slot, the light flashes green, and he opens the door just a crack. The cat is right there, nose pressed into the opening, all tense and ready to dart inside. “Do you belong in there?” Otabek asks, hesitating.

He lets the door click closed and kneels down, and the cat darts into the warm shelter under his legs, out of the rain. “You’re cold,” he says, “I know. But no collar. Where do you live, huh?”

With the sting of claws, the cat throws itself up into Otabek’s lap and dives practically inside his leather jacket, against his stomach. It’s tiny, and cold, and shaking. “Oh, okay,” he relents, and pets its little skull with two fingers. The cat presses up into it. “But once we get inside, we don’t know each other, okay?”

He’s not trying to get yelled at in a foreign country right before he skates a big event. That never leads anywhere good.

He straightens up and sets the cat back on the ground. “Look innocent, okay?” he says, and the cat looks up at him like it’s trying to understand him. And okay, sue him, his heart melts a little bit.

He keys open the door one more time, and pulls it wide to let the cat run in ahead of him. By the time he pulls the door closed against the rain, the cat is vanishing around a corner. He’s not sure if he did a good deed or a bad deed, but it makes him smile anyway, once he’s glanced around to make sure no one’s noticed. The little mischievous cat.

 

+

 

The next night, after he’s skated the short program, Otabek goes in search of a good, thick mat in the hotel gym so he can stretch his tight hip. It’s getting late and he doesn’t want to bother anyone else, but the hotel carpet is way too rough for his questionable knee, especially in the middle of a competition. Pillows or the mattress don’t work either: he needs an actual floor mat. He’s going to have to start traveling with one of his own, another concession to the uncool necessities of mastering his own body.

The gym is sad and tiny, in a corner of the basement and totally deserted, the motion-sensing lights only flipping on once he goes in.

He warms up for awhile, and finally sinks into the hip opener. It feels so good he rests his cheek on the mat and pretends, for a minute, that he could sleep like this.

Something rustles, the sound startling in the empty room, nothing but the whirring fluorescents and his own breathing otherwise. He doesn’t see anyone, but it must’ve come from that alcove. There’s no reason, really, for him to investigate. It could be just mice, in this old basement.

But part of him already knows what it’ll be.

The sound comes again as he steps around the corner, and he sees it: the little yellow cat, pouncing.

Now that it’s dry, its fur has resolved into a subtle orange and white tabby pattern, remarkably pretty.

The cat notices him finally, spinning and jumping, eyes huge, and backs into a corner. There’s nothing else there as far as he can see; whatever the cat was hunting, it’s gone or imaginary.

“It’s okay,” he says, and squats down a safe distance away. “Is this where you live? You’re a basement kitty?”

He fishes his phone out of his jacket pocket and thumbs the camera onto the screen. He’ll take a picture to show Yuri. Knowing him, he’s probably already met this cat through some kind of psychic cat-finding sense. He lines up the shot and the cat hisses and then cries, like its being stepped on. He lowers the phone and the cat relaxes minutely, marble-green eyes staring at him. He lifts the phone up again and the cat cowers and makes that sad, kicked sound. He feels like a monster.

“Okay, sorry, it’s okay,” he concedes, and stands up, feeling guilty. The phone goes back in his pocket. He takes a few steps away slowly. This is starting to feel surreal.

He heads for the door, but once he gets there he sees that the cat is following him, halfway across the gym floor. It stops when it sees him looking, and shrinks back, one paw aloft. There’s something so human about its eyes.

“You’re trying to leave, right?” he asks.

The cat meows.

A smile spreads across his face. He’s like, a cat whisperer. It’s too bad Yuri will never believe this without photographic evidence. “Okay.” He pulls the heavy door open and stands safely back. He waves the cat through, feeling a little silly while the cat just stares at him, paw still poised before a step. And then it _careens_ out of the room in a flash and disappears.

That should be the end of it, but he’s staring at his phone screen while he walks, trying to check his messages, and there’s no service down here, and he gets turned around on the way back to the elevator. That’s when he hears it. Sad, pained meowing like that little cat is being tortured or something.

He hurries to follow the sound and ends up in a room stocked with folded bed linens and towels. The cat must’ve gotten stuck somewhere—

He pulls open cabinet doors and looks under the curtains of maid carts, looking for the source of the sound. He finds the cat in a corner behind a rolling cart, cowering on a pile of blankets. Is it— could it be giving birth? But it looked so tiny, not like any pregnant animal he’s ever seen.

“What’s wrong,” he asks, mostly to himself, because how is the cat going to tell him? But when he speaks the cat notices him, and is almost comically shocked. It hisses at him, vicious, much worse than earlier, bristling all over.

He crouches down and holds out a hand to quiet it, and the cat swipes fast and ruthless, the pain in his palm instant and shocking. “Ow, _damn_ ,” he says, clutching it to his chest.

The cat runs around him, uncoordinated now, and before it can make it to the door, it falls where it stands and cries pitifully, legs locking up and then pulling in. Maybe it’s really sick, maybe it has rabies or something and now _he_ has rabies and he’s going to have to get those horrible shots in your stomach or whatever they do—

The cat goes still, then lifts itself with difficulty and creeps back over to the pile of blankets. It hisses at Otabek again; it obviously wants to be alone to lick its wounds in private. He stands up. He’ll have to tell someone there’s a cat down here now, so the hotel staff don’t startle it and get hurt. Possibly they already know, but they don’t know it’s sick or injured.

The cat burrows under a couple layers of blankets, and Otabek gives it a last, confused look, and turns to go.

And that’s when there’s a truly hideous sound that did _not_ come from a cat. A breaking, twisting, wrenching, organic sound. He spins back around, and the lump under the blankets is growing larger. It’s— could it be an animal den—

His brain races to supply some explanation for the impossible shapes.

And then a _bare human leg_ grows out of the pile of blankets. He’s scared stiff, can’t force himself to move even though he should run away.

A pained, human groan emerges from the blanket pile, and the leg is retracted most of the way as the shape curls up onto its side and goes still. It’s breathing, he can see that the person is breathing.

_What the fuck._

And then a hand comes up and tugs down the blanket to reveal a head of downy blonde hair, from under which Yuri Plisetsky is glaring at him.

“Yuri?” he says, dumbfounded.

Yuri swipes most of his hair out of his face and sits up. His hair is so long now, longer than it looked earlier when it was braided back during his short program. He looks up at Otabek with the same glass-bottle green eyes as the cat, and a fucking miserable expression on his face. “I tried to get you to leave,” he says.

Otabek has to take a second and turn away and touch his eyes and then turn back. “Oh my god,” he says, in Russian now. “What did I just see? I don’t— I—”

Yuri rolls his eyes. “Fuck off, okay? I’m fine now.” Only he sounds so sad and tired.

Also, he’s sitting against a cinderblock wall in a hotel basement, presumably naked under what is hopefully a clean blanket, one long, finely muscled leg sticking out, bare chest and shoulders visible above the blanket. He crosses his arms defensively.

 _Snap out of it_ , Otabek tells himself sternly. He shakes his head at how long he’s just been standing here staring. “Here,” he says. He unzips his jacket, pulls it off, and tosses it into Yuri’s lap.

Yuri picks it up, but he just looks sadder and more annoyed. “I don’t need this,” he says gruffly, and throws it back. “Get out of here so I can deal with this.”

“Deal with—? You need to get back to your room, right?” Otabek asks.

“Yeah,” Yuri says. “It’s fine, I’ll just wear a towel or something.” He tilts his chin at a pile of them.

He so clearly wants to be left alone, and Otabek really, really knows what that’s like, and he wants to do that for him, but—

Otabek throws the jacket back and uses the toe of one shoe to push off the heel of the other one, stepping out of them. “So you can’t take the elevator all the way up from down here, it doesn’t connect,” he explains, as Yuri eyes the jacket disdainfully. “You have to cross the lobby.”

“God fucking damn it,” Yuri explodes, glaring up at the ceiling and balling his hands into fists like he’s going to strangle god himself. “What did I do in a previous life to deserve this actual shitshow of a fucking joke of a—” He sounds pissed, but Otabek is a tiny bit relieved he doesn’t sound so sad anymore.

He hesitates, hand on the waistband of his sweatpants, but Yuri looks so small and defenseless down there, and it doesn’t matter if this is stupid. He has to _help_.

“Um!” Yuri protests when he shoves his sweats down and steps out of them. “The whole idea is that nobody should be naked, genius.”

“I’m not naked,” Otabek says, grateful that he’s wearing a sturdy pair of black boxer-briefs. They're tight, but in figure-skating world they're modest. He’s _not_ going to be embarrassed right now, even though he feels really stupid. He throws his sweatpants onto Yuri’s lap, where they join his jacket.

Yuri puts his head in his hands and sighs. “I don’t need your warmups, man” he says into his hands.

Otabek scoffs. “What’s your plan, wear the jacket and nothing else and you’re good?”

When Yuri emerges again his face is slightly red. “What if someone sees you, though,” he says.

Otabek shrugs. His underwear looks enough like shorts that he can get away with it for the short walk. “I’ll say it’s normal in Kazakhstan.”

Yuri laughs, something relieved and helpless in it. He shakes his head and seems to decide something, and then he grabs the jacket and pulls it on, zipping it all the way up to his chin. The sweatpants disappear under the blanket and he squirms around under there and then triumphantly throws back the blanket, clothed. He looks smaller but more secure now that he’s in Otabek’s clothes, and Otabek tries not to smile about it. It must show on his face anyway, because Yuri colors more and mutters, “Fuck off. I feel like an idiot.”

He rolls up the hem of the sweats while Otabek pulls his shoes back on, and then Yuri stands up, barefoot. Now that they’re at eye level, it’s harder to look at him. He’s the same as always, still shorter than Otabek, although not by much anymore, and the biggest and brightest thing in every room.

So is this what it always was? That otherworldliness about Yuri Plisetsky? Is this the magic he’s always been able to call up on the ice, while Otabek has only ever been able to scrape out competence through diligent work, always aware there was a level of artistry he couldn’t quite meet?

“Quit looking at me like that,” Yuri mutters, and steps away from him to peer out into the hallway and make sure no one’s nearby.

He’s an asshole. He touches Yuri’s arm. “Sorry,” he says. “I don’t know how to think about this. It’s— So this just... happens, sometimes?” It’s clear that he can’t control it, or they wouldn’t be in this situation.

Yuri looks at his hand on his arm and turns so it falls away, but he’s facing Otabek again, so he doesn’t feel like too much of a jerk. “Yeah,” he says, and he sounds just defeated over it, the way Otabek has never heard or heard of him acting about absolutely anything. He really wants to make Yuri not sound like that anymore. “I know,” Yuri goes on. “I know it’s crazy. I mean, what the fuck.”

“I was trying to take a picture of the cat to show you,” Otabek says. He smiles, because this is magic. This is actual magic, Yuri is magic, which he’s always suspected anyway. “It’s kind of... amazing?” he suggests, feeling silly as soon as he says it, because Yuri makes a face at him.

“Ugh,” Yuri says. “But...” He looks down. “Thanks for the stuff.” He grabs Otabek’s hand carefully, quickly, and flips it over between them, the cat scratches on it showing up as angry red lines. “And sorry about your hand,” he says. He looks back up at Otabek. “It won’t fuck you up tomorrow right? In the free?”

“Nah,” Otabek agrees. He’ll have to clean it and bandage it up, but it’s fine.

“I can’t always,” Yuri begins, and cuts himself off. They’re standing very close together and he’s still examining Otabek’s hand. “The stupid cat brain doesn’t always listen to me,” he explains. “I wanted you to go away but I didn’t mean to do that.”

He hadn’t even thought of it, in the grand scheme of other things that happened. “It’s okay,” Otabek says easily. Just like he said to the cat earlier. “It’s nothing. You can’t hurt me, I’m bigger than you,” he adds, teasing, because he feels sort of joyful, actually, and Yuri still looks sad.

Yuri scoffs at him and drops his hand. “Please, I could easily take you,” he says, and checks that the coast is clear in the hallway again. “You go up first,” he says.

They definitely shouldn’t be seen together, neither of them fully dressed. And yet. “Maybe I should just make sure you get back okay,” Otabek says.

“ _Ugh_ ,” Yuri says again, more emphatically. “Fuck off. I’m not a kid.”

 _But you are a—something_ , Otabek thinks, and wisely doesn’t say. “You don’t have your keycard, though,” Otabek says. “How will you get into your room?”

“Yakov, I’ll go to his first. He’ll be there.”

“Does he—know?” Otabek asks. He has one million questions.

Yuri nods. “It’s okay, Beka,” he says, and this time he _sounds_ okay enough that Otabek starts to believe him.

The name doesn’t hurt, either.

“Oh, my keycard, I forgot,” Otabek says, and reaches toward the jacket pocket. He stops short of touching it, because it’s sitting over Yuri’s hip.

Yuri catches on. He slips it out and hands it over, and then shoves his hands in the jacket pockets.

Otabek takes it and looks down at it, chewing his lip. “You need a keycard for the elevators, though,” he says slowly, working it out, apologetically.

Yuri looks up at the ceiling helplessly. “So I’ll get them to help me at the desk. Or I’ll call Yakov from there.”

“But I can help you,” Otabek says. And he’s not sure why it’s so important to him, because he knows he’s making Yuri a little miserable by not letting him escape this weird fucking situation. But the thing is, he’d only be escaping it to stand all vulnerable in the lobby, where anybody could find and photograph him, wearing no shoes and clothes that are obviously too big for him. And Otabek doubts Yuri actually wants that, either.

Yuri glares at him. “Fine,” he finally says, mad all over again. “But I fucking hate this.”

“Yep,” Otabek agrees.

Everything goes according to plan. They ride the first elevator up together, and then Otabek crosses the lobby and waits at the out-of-the-way elevator bay while Yuri hangs back until an appropriate amount of time has passed. Then he slouches his way across the lobby and meets up with Otabek, who doesn’t look at him until they step into the elevator alone. “I wish your fucking jacket had a hood,” Yuri mumbles, at least half of his hair in front of his face. He shakes some of it back and looks over, hip leaning against the opposite rail.

“I’ll try to remember for next time,” Otabek concedes. He touches his keycard to the sensor and looks over at Yuri.

“Fourteen,” Yuri says, and Otabek hits 14 and 10.

Otabek steps off at the tenth floor, and he knows the smart thing to do is say good luck and try to forget this happened, but there’s no way. He shoves his hand against the door so it won’t close. Yuri’s gaze on him is furious and demanding.

“Text me so I know you got back,” Otabek says, and refuses to flinch.

The silence is tense. Finally, Yuri just says, “I don’t have your number,” which is as good as agreeing, and Otabek smiles with half his mouth. In the most magical turn of events so far that day, including Otabek setting a new personal best and coming within decimals of the record and Yuri transforming into a cat, Yuri smiles back. He holds out his hand.

Otabek thumbs his phone screen to a number entry and passes it over. The elevator doors ding and try to twitch closed and they both ignore it.

Yuri hands the phone back.

Otabek steps out of the door, and before he can think of anything good to say the doors slide finally closed. Neither of them look away from the other before they’re out of view.

Some American tourists give Otabek a funny but not disapproving look for his clothing choices, but other than that, he makes it into his room unscathed.

Well, except for the cat scratch.

He texts so Yuri will have his number and be able to text him: **good luck tomorrow.**

He’s in the bathroom cleaning the cuts when his phone vibrates, just a few minutes later. Yuri has saved his name as just Yuri P, and it’s shocking that that’s only the second most surprising thing he’s done today. Otabek would’ve guessed a cat emoji. Maybe a string of curse words.

The text says, **If you fuck up tomorrow because of this I’m never talking to you again**.

 **You too** , Otabek texts back.

He doesn’t mean it, although Yuri might.

Neither of them fuck up.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i can be found on tumblr [here](http://okaynowkiss.tumblr.com), doing almost nothing but yelling about this show


End file.
